Quote from: suzifrommd on April 09, 2014, 06:33:04 AM
After reading some of Julia Serrano's stuff, I've begun to see this all in a different way (and I DO consider myself a feminist, BTW).
There are two issues that feminists tend to confuse:
1. Women, for whatever reason, tend to seek and place importance on their own beauty.
2. Women are judged by their looks.
Yes, the second is a severe problem, as FA and others have pointed out. No, women should not be judged by looks any more than men should be judged by fighting ability, bravery, athletic prowess, earning potential, etc.
But I see absolutely NOTHING wrong with the first. The pursuit of beauty is frivolous, yes, but so is the pursuit of athletic prowess, level 126 on the latest video game, or even zillions more dollars than you can spend in your lifetime. I find decorating my body with clothes and jewelry that make me feel good and show my best side to the world boosts my confidence, and is FUN. There is something uniquely feminine about this. I didn't have this drive when I lived as a man.
I don't see anything non-feminist about a boob job. If having bigger breasts make you feel better, you should have bigger breasts. If feminists have a problem with us doing what makes us feel good they've crossed over the boundary between fighting for our rights and trying to control our behavior.
There are lots of things I agree with Julia Serrano about, and I think she's a lovely person, and meeting her was grand. But I definitely don't agree with everything.
Beauty is inherently a social construct that has evolved over time to fit different standards. There is no way of separating being judged from judging yourself. They both come from the same place. That's why we talk about internalized beauty standards. That means they have been absorbed from the society in which we exist. I.e. wanting to have big tits only exists in my head because having big tits is perceived as good within the society in which I exist. There have been periods in time when small tits were preferable: see the 1920s for example.
However, what I will say is that at the end of the day we have to live and survive and be mentally healthy in this world. Your body, your needs, your choice. When it comes to an individual, they need to do whatever works for them. That's why I support public health coverage of breast augmentation for trans women, and ->-bleeped-<- like that. You can't pretend like this world doesn't exist. It does and the rules are there. So you need to balance between working within those rules to make sure people are as okay as they can be, and at the same time questioning why those standards exist and how they can be shifted so we don't need to make those changes.
For myself, the battle isn't between ideology and desire. It's between competing needs. The need to feel as free as I can make myself of the standards of my society. And the need to feel like my body is beautiful and valuable. Will I feel better or worse about myself after a boob job? I'm not sure, yet. Which is why I still haven't done it.
